


like nails in my feet

by Rethira



Category: Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 22:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Palom in the tower.</p>
<p>(part of the White Queen Rosa AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	like nails in my feet

**Author's Note:**

> this was orginally published [here, under a different title](http://angelicaurion.tumblr.com/post/62521350253/fic-a-cold-and-lonely-hallelujah)
> 
> I've made some changes since then and expanded it a little
> 
> title from [a softer world](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=196)

The sky is bluer than he remembers it being. Brighter than before, the same colour as the lagoons near Troia. Sometimes he stares outside the window and wishes he could jump into that blue, blue sky.

~

“Hey, Porom, tell me about the flowers?”

“The bluebells have bloomed. The trees are coming into blossom. Old Mother May is making apple blossom jam again.”

“Tell me, what does the wind smell like?”

“It smells of the sea and springtime.”

“Ah, it sounds nice.”

“Palom?”

“Hey, Porom, when will you take me outside?”

“Tomorrow, Palom. Tomorrow.”

~

There’s only one room at the top of the tower. It’s spacious enough; not quite a complete circle. The wall where the door is has bookshelves lining the rest of it, from the floor all the way to where the wall gives way to rafters. There’s a little wheeled stepladder so he can reach the top. He’d wheeled it over to the windows once, but it wasn’t high enough to let him look outside. Sometimes he wheels it over anyway, and sits on the top and stares out at where he can just see the stars in the sky. Most nights he takes one of the books from the bookshelf, lies down on the bed, and reads until he falls asleep.

Some nights Porom comes and keeps him awake with gentle touches and sweet whispers; the heat of her hands on his skin feels like the only thing binding him to this world. An anchor without whom he’d drift away. The idea makes him shake. He could never live without her.

There’s a desk under the other window; at first he’d refused to use it. The shadows from the bars on his window had painted themselves starkly over the wood of the desk. Eventually, Porom had developed a way to replace the iron bars over the window with magical ones instead – they don’t cast shadows. He’d stood on the desk and reached out, and the magical bars had felt every bit as real as the iron ones. He starts using the desk after that; Porom smiles when she visits.

There’s a table in the centre of the room. It’s always set with two chairs, even though Porom hardly ever visits for dinner. Three times a day one of the guards unlocks the door and carries in a meal. Most of the time it’s soup and bread – when Porom’s visiting she’ll have something more interesting brought up. The guards never give him knives. It’s always fully cut up in advance, like he’s a child who can’t cut his food properly. He’d refused to eat after that rule came into effect, but after one day with no food, the guards had started to drag him to the table and force food down his throat. He’d started eating again. Porom had never mentioned the incident.

In the corner beside his bed, there’s a screen that hides a bathtub. Twice a week the guards escort the maids in, carrying huge pails full of warm water. While he’s bathing, they clean the room thoroughly and make his bed. When he’s done with the bath, the guards carry it downstairs again. Palom had offered to evaporate it once, but the guards had refused to let him try. When Porom had come by later and helped to dry his hair she’d said, “Of course you can’t use magic, Palom.” He’d tried as soon as she’d left, but the magic wouldn’t come. He could feel it, just out of reach, but no matter what he did, it wouldn’t come.

“What did you do to me?” he’d asked.

“What I had to do,” Porom had replied.

She gives him potions to tinker with after that; has a table set up beside his desk, and shelves installed behind it. She only gives him harmless potions at first, but one day she comes and sits down at the table with him and says, “Palom, I want you to do something for me.”

He makes her a poison. It’s like before, almost. He wonders who she’s going to kill with it.

Whenever she wants a poison made, she comes to sit and watch him. It sends a sick little giddy thrill through him – he invariably gets to spend the whole day with her, instead of just an hour or two. She won’t let him be alone with the poison for even a moment, and she doesn’t trust the guards to watch him. He can almost forget where he is on those days – it’s just like before.

He can laugh when she’s there; he can laugh despite the liquid death in his hands.

~

“How old are we?”

“Forty-three.”

“So I’ve been here....”

“Two years.”

“Ah.”

~

Her skin is sun-kissed in the summer. He’s always been the paler one – well, perhaps not always. But in recent years, he’s spent more time in the libraries with his books than outside and it’s shown. But now his skin is wretchedly pale against hers. She doesn’t even spend that long outside, she says, but it’s enough. “At least you won’t get freckles,” she says, to cheer him up. He kisses the freckles on the bridge of her nose, and laughs when she pushes him off.

When winter comes, there’s snow on her shoulders and ice in her hair. She glitters, untouchable. Her cheeks are rosy and when she holds his hand, her fingers are freezing. “How do you get it to stay?” he asks, when the ice in her hair doesn’t melt despite their proximity to the fire. She smiles; later on, when they’re tangled in the sheets of Palom’s bed, she lets her hair down and presses the tie into his hand. It’s cool to the touch and shimmers in the moonlight. “One of the mages invented it,” she tells him, and lets him tie her hair up again before the ice melts.

He knows when it’s autumn by the shortening of the days. He’s glad of it; when Porom comes, the light of the setting sun streams in through the tower’s high windows and sets her hair aflame. He buries his hand in burnished fire and drinks the pretty lies that spill from her lips.

On the first day of spring, she comes with a snowdrop pinned to her dress. One day she comes to him flushed and smiling, a sprig of cherry blossom behind her ear and she looks beautiful and warm and real – the blossom falls to the floor and neither of them picks it up. He crushes it underfoot later, and bites back his anger when she brings flowers in jars of water and places them where the sun will catch them. The maids clear them away when they die, but Porom just brings more. She smells of wildflowers and sunshine.

~

He looks up abruptly. Something has changed.

After a moment, he closes his eyes in grief. Tears well up in his eyes, but he wipes them away before they can fall.

He stands from his desk and begins to drag furniture across the room to barricade the door.

The guards never do figure out how he killed himself, and perhaps that’s for the best.

~

“Why am I here?”

“.....”

“You should have let me die.”

“You know I could never do that, Palom.”

~

He can’t see the moon through the window. He’d climbed as high as he could, used the bars to haul himself up, but the moon hadn’t appeared to him. It had been the first time he’d seen grass and trees for ages. The moon had lit them with silver; he’d clung to the bars so tight his knuckles turned white and his fingers had hurt when he let go.

Sometimes he didn’t wonder if that memory was just a dream.

~

He makes her a poison.

“Delicious,” she says, her lips stained wine-red.

He makes her a poison.

“Exquisite,” she says, her eyes blank and cold.

He makes her a poison.

“Wonderful,” she says, her nose dripping blood.

He makes her a poison.

“Did you make it for me?” she asks, taking a delicate sip.

No-one ever comes when he wakes up screaming.

~

One day, Porom comes up with the guards and has them push the table aside. She sets a bouquet of flowers on the windowsill; after a moment or two, music begins to emerge from it. Porom turns around and smiles.

“Whisperweed,” she says, and then she holds out her hand and asks, “Dance with me?”

He obliges; with his eyes shut and the swelling music, he can almost believe he’s elsewhere. Back in Baron, or Troia even. He’d never liked dancing there, simply because of all the people watching. If they’d been found out.... But Porom had always assured him that no-one would realise the truth. No-one would know; brothers and sisters often danced together, she said, and besides which, they were twins and everyone knew that twins were closer than normal siblings.

There’s no-one to watch now. It’s just them, dancing in this small room, to music being played miles away.

Eventually, the music comes to an end and Porom steps away. She collects the bouquet and walks over to the door.

“Stay with me,” he says, barely louder than a whisper. “Please. Stay.”

Porom looks back with sad, tired eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Palom,” she says.

~

“Why did you do it?”

“You had to die.”

“Not that. The other. Why did you.....”

“I could never live without you.”

~

A week after Lady Porom’s death, the smoke from a large fire can be seen on the horizon east from Mysidia.

~

Before he’d gained back his strength, and when the days had melted into each other, Porom had sat beside him on the bed. She’d dabbed his forehead gently with a cloth, murmured sweet nothings and stroked his fevered skin. Once, he’d woken with his head in her lap, and there had been an expression of such _fury_ on her face that he’d feigned sleep to escape it.

“Leonora is dead,” she tells him. “Leonora is dead, and so are you.”

He clutches her hand and croaks, “I love you.”

Porom’s expression softens, and she dips her head, kisses him sweetly and says, “I know.”


End file.
